The waters of the Ionia server ran deep. Those murky depths were where the Diamond 1 and Master yers gathered. But one could never know exactly what kind of monster they’d run into fishing in those waters deep. There were a lot of professional yers, streamers, and famous gaming content creators at this level, waiting for the chance to finally step up to Challenger. The truth was that they weren’t hard stuck at this depth because they weren’t good enough to be Challengers. That was the furthest thing from the truth. These were the best yers in all of China, some of them were even among the best yers in the world.


    But League of Legends was a game built around teamwork. Especially at this level. Sometimes, a game would be lost because one yer on the team was having an off day, and that was enough for the opposing team to gain an advantage and snowball. Most of these yers had hit the peak of individual ability in the game, so their advancement to the top of the Master rank was based more on how well they managed to synergize into a team with four other people. Some days, they’d get lucky and find the perfect team. Other days, not so much.


    But climbing up to the top of Master wasn’t the only obstacle in the path to bing a Challenger. There was a fixed number of yers who could get to Challenger. In order for a yer to move up from Master to Challenger, one of the current Challengers had to be forcefully thrown back down into Master. The battle never ended for those in the Master and Challenger rank. They had to fight constantly to get up to Challenger, and then keep fighting to keep their ce. A single moment of weakness and all of the silent monsters hidden in the depths of the Ionia server woulde out to feast.


    Beyond the hurdles, there was a more practical reason why most of the professional yers never bothered to hit Challenger or retain their spot once they hit it for the first time. They rarely had the time to sit around and y in solo queue. Their focus was on winning tournaments, and to do that they needed to constantly y together with their team. ying alone in the Challenger pool would actually be detrimental to them. Their focus was on practicing as a team and scrimming against other professional teams. It built team synergy, one of the most important aspects in tournaments. Between that and all the time they spent travelling across the world to attend tournaments, they just didn’t have the time to worry about their solo queue rank.


    On the rare asion when a professional yer did show up in solo queue, the entire server would start bubbling as the monsters swarmed around. Especially if the professional yer belonged to a team that was ying in the LPL. Streamers would spectate the game and provide y-by-ymentary to their viewers. Fans would debate and cheer across chats and social media would end up flooded with memes and clips from the game.


    That was the situation that Su Xue’s stream was in right now. The people watching the stream hadpletely lost their minds! The name of the yer who had fifth pick! It was one of the most recognizable names in all of China! Everyone knew it! HoG Nightsong. Bleakwinter Nightsong. The ad-carry for Hand of God and one of the top three ad-carries in all of China!


    The viewers spammed the chat in their excitement. They weren’t reading what other people were saying or responding to them. They barely knew what they were typing. This was literally the most exciting thing that could happen while watching a stream, and it was happening to them! Nightsong was their idol! Watching him y in solo queue was a dreame true! And now they’d get to see him y on the same game as the streamer they were watching, on the same team! And to think that only a minute ago they wereining that Lin Feng hadn’t queued up with a professional yer yet. The gods had heard them!


    But under the waves of excitement was also a weak undercurrent. One that started gaining traction as the initial hype and shock of seeing Nightsong’s name in the champion select faded and chat regained someposure. More than a few viewers didn’t buy that this Nightsong was the real Nightsong.


    「isnt nightsong supposed to be in london right now? why isnt he scrimming with his team?」


    「right! this cant be him right???? is that a troll pretending to be nightsong??? it cant be nightsong??????」


    「Idiots! Didn’t I just tell you! Their scrims don''t start for another two days! Go read HoG’s announcement!」


    「OMG! Wiatwaitwaitwitawatiwait! LOOK AT THIRD PICK!」


    「Look at third pick!」


    「ITS HIM!!! LOOK!!!」


    「who is that?」


    The summoner name of the yer at third pick was ‘OldWorn’.[1] The viewers of the stream felt like they’d heard this name before, but they couldn’t ce where. It looked so familiar. The answer was on the tip of their tongue. Then it hit them.


    「omgomgomgomgomg」


    「ooooooooooooohhhhh shiiiiit!!!!」


    「Isn’t that the name of Star Emperor’s smurf?」


    「YEP! that’s the friggin star emperor!!!1!!」


    There were yers who had second ounts in lower ranks where they would asionally y on. Smurf ounts. Different yers had them for different reasons. But most top and professional yers had them for the same reason. There were only so many yers in Challenger. This meant that the queue times could get really long, and really boring. If they yed on their smurfs, which were ranked just below Challenger, they could quickly get into a game and start having fun!


    OldWorn. Star Emperor. They were just different names for one person. The yer at third pick in champion select on Lin Feng’s team was Daybreak Hermes! The Daybreak Hermes. The famous miner of Hand of God. One of the Seven Kings. And the King who had gone toe-to-toe with an Emperor in the Season 5 Mid-Season Invitational and emerged victorious!


    Two famous professional yers in the same game! On the same team! ON THE SAME TEAM AS THEIR STREAMER! The people watching the stream were beyond shocked, beyond starstruck. This was the day they finally achieved Nirvana. Chat waspletely still. Bleakwinter Nightsong. Daybreak Hermes. Not one, but two. Daybreak Hermes, Bleakwinter Nightsong and… Lin Feng? Two of their idols duo queueing together! They would get to see the game firsthand! Chat stirred to life again. But no words. It was walls of exmation marks and emotes.


    While the people watching the stream were losing their minds and changing their shorts from the excitement of finding out two of their idols were in the same game as their streamer, Lin Feng had been lost in his own little world and didn’t notice the hubaloo. He was trying to figure out what champion he wanted to y. Once he sorted that out in his head, he looked over at chat and noticed that something had happened. Exmation marks. Emotes. There were a few messages every now and then, but they scrolled up so fast that he couldn’t read a word of them. After this happened 30 times in thest 10 seconds, he started putting the pieces together. They’re super excited about the guys in third pick and fifth pick? Hm... He looked at the summoner names in champion select and then eximed, “Oh wow! How awesome is this, guys? Did you notice? Oh… right. You guys already did. YEAH! This is going to be really fun! Hermes and Nightsong! This should be a pretty cool game!”


    The yers started picking their champions. Lin Feng was fourth pick on the Blue team. First pick locked in a Topne champion. The Red team could now choose their first and second champion, and then the second and third pick on Blue team could go. Second pick locked in a Jungler. The yers who had first and second pick on the Blue team had both decided not to choose Mid or Ad-carry as their roles out of respect. Those two roles were reserved for Hermes and Nightsong! Sadly, this meant that the only role left for Lin Feng was Support.


    Lin Feng scratched his hair, a little unhappy. “Man… I really really don’t wanna y support…”


    「Don’t whine and just support!」


    「are you dumb!? you dont fight them for their roles!! they be legends!!!!」


    「Nightsong and Star Emperor are probably trying to warm up for the tournament! Give them their roles!」


    「yeah! YOU better not tilt our yers right before worlds starts!!!」


    OldWorn, better known as the Star Emperor or Hermes, locked in the champion Veigar. He was going mid. It was starting to look like Lin Feng would have to end up being a Support in this game. But then Nightsong typed a message in the champion select chat.HoG Nightsong:「Fourth, can you adc? If you can’t support, I’ll do it.」


    Water Wraith:「Yes yes! I can adc. I’m really good at ADC!」


    Nightsong asking Lin Feng to y ad-carry was a twist that no one watching the stream sawing. They literally could not believe that a professional ad-carry yer, one of the best in China, would willingly give up his role to some unknown yer. And that he was willing to add wonder on top of a miracle by offering to y support for that unknown yer who would be the ad-carry. But that wasn’t even the thing that blew their minds. Not even close. The most spectacr, unbelievable, astonishing, mind-blowing thing to happen in thest five minutes was Lin Feng’s reply.


    「HOLY SHIT DUDE!!! you’re my heroo!!!!」


    「the fuck… first he sulks that Nightsong probably wants to y ad-carry, and then when Nightsong let’s him y ad-carry, he starts bragging like he IS nightsong……….」


    「thcest skin on all of huya!!!!11」


    「how does he walk around with balls that heavy and made of steel?」


    「Nah, thickest skin in all of China!」


    「Dis fuck aksually tell Nightsong that hes good at adc? how/////」


    The newer viewers hadpletely lost it. Since they didn’t know Lin Feng, this was to be expected. But even the long-time viewers felt like they’d just been suckerpunched by Lin Feng’s ego. They knew he was good at League of Legends. They even knew that he was a good ad-carry. They also knew that there wasn’t a single yer in all of Gold and tinum who could beat him. But no one had ever seen him y a game in an ELO this high before. But whatever happened in the game, Lin Feng had done something today that was worth bragging about. He made Nightsong give him ad-carry!


    Lin Feng ignored whatever was happening in chat. He needed to focus on champion select. More specifically, he wanted to see which champion Nightsong was going to use. He waited and watched, thinking the whole time. Nightsong locked in Blitzcrank. Lin Feng considered his options for a moment. He needed to make sure the champion he picked had great synergy with Blitzcrank and was a champion he enjoyed ying. He looked around the list of ad-carry champions, thinking. Then he picked Vayne and locked in.


    Lin Feng decided to go with Vayne after putting some thought into how the game would be yed and how he could work best with Nightsong’s Blitzcrank. But he’d also done something that once again blew the minds of the people watching the stream. See, Lin Feng had not only taken Nightsong’s role in the game. In his typical unintentional and oblivious fashion, he also picked Nightsong’s signature champion.


    ?


    《Wee to Summoner’s Rift!》


    While the other yers were busy buying their starting items and walking to theirnes, Lin Feng looked at the stream. The number of viewers had teaued at 1,500. Until he ended up in a game with Nightsong and Hermes. That’s when the viewer count started skyrocketing. Right now, there were more than 3,000 viewers! And it was still going up! He looked over his shoulder at the peacefully asleep Su Xue. If she were awake right now, he knew that she''d probably be losing her mind. He grinned as he pictured her jumping up and down in joy. This game was like winning the lottery for her. Her stream hit a new viewer count record every few seconds. Some of them woulde back tomorrow and eventually be regrs. This game had made her viral!


    The insane number of viewers flooding into Su Xue’s stream wasn’t unprecedented or unexpected. In a certain light, it madeplete sense. Nightsong and Daybreak Hermes rarely ever yed solo queue. Nor did they show up in a game together very often. But the timing made this particr asion all the more special. Worlds was right around the corner! This happening right now, there was a one in a million chance! No! A one in trillion chance! The odds of this happening were so astronomically low that there was a higher probability of the viewers meeting a kpop idol who would agree to date them. There was only one stream to watch tonight, and that was Su Xue’s. They couldn’t spectate the game from Nightsong’s or Hermes’ perspective, but they could still see them y!


    Lin Feng didn’t care about the viewers flooding in or their excitement beyond the joy it would bring Su Xue. His attention was on the game in front of him. He looked at his Vayne and balled his fist. No matter what, he had to do well in this game! He still remembered his very first game with Tang Bingyao at the NetCow Cafe. The game where she picked Draven and he took over from her because she was losing to a Vayne. First Tyrant. That was the summoner name of the guy who yed that Vayne. Lin Feng remembered it well. That game had ignited his desire to relearn the champion. Every game he yed with Vayne since then, he’d beenparing himself with First Tyrant’s Vayne. And now that he’d shaken off the rust, he was confident he could now go toe-to-toe with First Tyrant’s Vayne inne. But Lin Feng didn’t know that First Tyrant was HoG Nightsong’s smurf ount!


    On the other side of the world, Nightsong sat in a 5 star hotel in London, equally unaware that the yer behind the name Water Wraith was the same one who’d given him so much trouble with a Draven. The Draven who had forced him to go all out in what he thought was a casual game. The Draven he almost lost hisne to. The Draven who had sent chills down his spine. If the game hadn’t been cut short by another yer’s angry girlfriend, Nightsong knew there was a chance he might have lost to that Draven.


    Call it a fluke, a crazy coincidence, or fate, but these two yers were now on the same team and paired together as the bottomne duo. They had never yed together before. Neither of them knew they’d even yed against each other. But their synergy was on point.. It was more than good. It was perfect! They danced and moved like they’d been married for 40 years and could read each other’s thoughts!


    ?


    3 minutes into the game, a silver bolt from Lin Feng’s whizzed through the air and took down a low health minion. Nightsong’s Blitzcrank timed his Rocket Grab perfectly to the instant that the minion died. Blitzcrank’s right hand flew over the freshly dead minion’s corpse and grabbed the Ashe.


    Lin Feng had targeted the Ashe behind the minion before the attack from his Vayne hadnded on the minion. He knew Nightsong’s Blitzcrank was going to follow up with the grab. The second the Ashe was pulled forward, Vayne shot another bolt at the Ashe and then tumbled forward to cleanly dodge an Aqua Prison from the Nami. Lin Feng followed up with Condemn. Vayne pulled the heavy crossbow on her back out. A giant bolt flew out and pierced the Ashe through her chest and sent her flying backwards towards a nearby wall, pinning her to it.


    “Awesome! That was so clean! I yed that perfectly!” Lin Feng eximed.


    Chat responded with emotes of rolling eyes. They heard Lin Feng praising himself instead of talking about what a great support Nightsong was.


    1. The original name “久了就旧了” is a y on words in Chinese using different characters that sound simr. It trantes to, “if it’s old, it’s worn”.